'Please help. Give us aid'

Indian survivors of the Boxing Day 2004 tsunami struggle for food aid in Nagapattinam, Madras. Photo: Prakash Singh/AFP/Getty

Tsunami survivors in the battered Indonesian province of Aceh today voiced frustration with the slowness of aid efforts as emergency workers struggled to cope with a logistical nightmare.

In the provincial capital, Banda Aceh, rotting bodies and piles of debris continued to clutter the streets, with the local government in disarray. Officials were burying dead bodies by the truckload, but lacked enough workers to give them proper burials.

Sunday's earthquake and the resulting tsunami on the Indian Ocean struck Aceh hardest of all. The northern Sumatran province, which has a population of around 5 million, lay closest to the quake's epicentre.

The Indonesian health minister, Siti Fadilah Supari, said the death toll in Aceh was likely to rise to more than 100,000. The number of confirmed dead is 79,940.

"It will take at least two weeks for us to have the people and equipment we need here," Aigor Lacomba, representing a consortium of European aid groups, told Reuters. "It means nothing to bring a whole lot of staff if you have nowhere for them to live."

There were few indications of coordinated aid distribution in Banda Aceh and its suburbs. Handwritten signs stuck on poles and fences said: "Please help. Give us aid."

Eddy, a 50-year-old teacher whose school was destroyed in the disaster, complained that people with little or no money left had to pay for fuel. "Why do we have to pay? It should be free after this disaster. What is wrong with the government?"

At one of the only two open petrol stations in town, cars queued for more than a mile, watched by police carrying automatic weapons. Hundreds of people stood in lines, carrying jerry cans.

"It's taking too long to get petrol. The police are there. Otherwise there would be violence. Tell the world we need more fuel. Look at this queue," Zezi Afrizal, 26, a food seller, said.

Others urged authorities to open more fuel outlets. "We need the fuel badly. Our family wants to go to Medan. We have so many children, and we're afraid of disease," said Rizal, 30, driving a black van.

In the fishing village of Meulaboh, whole swaths of land were stripped bare, with just debris and house foundations remaining. Around a quarter of the town's 40,000 people were feared to have died, but only a fraction of that number have so far been found.

While supplies were arriving in Banda Aceh, they were piling up at airports because of the difficulty of distributing them. At the main airport, Australian and Singaporean crews unloaded military C-130 aircraft as hundreds of people milled around, trying to get on flights out of the stricken region.

Officials said some aid was trickling through to those in need, despite fuel and transport shortages.

"The aid is getting out when you consider the amount of traffic coming in here. People at the extremities are probably getting it, but there are limitations," an Australian army major, Grant King, said. He added that, after unloading, each Hercules C-130 plane was flying out with 50-60 refugees on board.

"If you go around to some places in Aceh, IDPs [internally displaced people] are getting aid," Michael Elmquist, the head of the UN office for the coordination of humanitarian affairs in Indonesia, said.

However, many aid workers said they were growing frustrated at their inability to start work. Peter Sharwood, an orthopaedic surgeon from a private practice in Brisbane, said he had been unable to get transport to town to start helping.

"People need to be treated now, so that they don't get deep infections ... Those who had life-threatening injuries to start with have probably already died," he said.

Mr Sharwood said that at least a dozen Australian doctors, including surgeons and infectious disease specialists, had flown in.

In Sri Lanka, torrential rain hampered efforts by relief workers to deliver aid to hundreds of thousands of people made homeless by the tsunami. Many coastal roads that survived the disaster were cut off by the downpour, which started shortly before dawn on a day declared one of national mourning by the government.

The tsunami devastated tourist resorts of southern and eastern Sri Lanka, as well as scores of villages and hamlets inhabited by people who work in the tourism, fishing or craft industries.

"We are back to where we were 50 years ago," said J P Sivaramakrishnan, a city official from Batticaloa, in eastern Sri Lanka. "We are back to coconuts. People are going to have to carve new boats out of coconut wood, build new houses with coconut leaves. Eat the coconuts."

As the death toll from the disaster soared to 124,000, nations around the world had donated £259.1m towards the world's largest-ever relief effort. The UN secretary general, Kofi Annan, said even more money would be needed.

The British government yesterday added £35m to its original pledge, bringing its contribution to £50m. The British public has so far contributed £32m to a fund set up by the Disasters Emergency Committee, a coalition of 12 charities.

With pledges mounting, armed forces around the world joined the aid effort. A US aircraft carrier battle group was heading for Sumatra, while New Zealand, Australia, Singapore, Pakistan and scores of other nations had planes in the air, rushing aid to victims. The UK is sending two Royal Navy ships, including Lynx helicopters, probably to Sri Lanka and the Maldives. An RAF C-17 cargo plane will also take part in the operation.

The US, India, Australia, Japan and the UN have formed an international coalition to coordinate worldwide relief and reconstruction efforts.

Indonesia said it would host an international summit on January 6 to discuss aid and reconstruction needs after the earthquake and tsunami, the world's deadliest natural disaster since China's Tangshan quake in 1976, which killed 250,000 people.

"This is an unprecedented global catastrophe, and it requires an unprecedented global response," Mr Annan said. His comments came as aid agencies warned that 5 million people lacked clean water, shelter, food, sanitation and medicine.

Death tolls across the region continued to grow. Indonesia reported 80,000 confirmed dead. Sri Lanka reported around 28,500, India more than 7,300 and Thailand around 4,500, half of them foreigners. More than 300 people were killed in Malaysia, Burma, Bangladesh, the Maldives, Somalia, Tanzania and Kenya.

As more bodies were recovered, families endured their sixth day of not knowing the fate of friends and relatives. Tens of thousands of people were still missing, including at least 2,500 Swedes, more than 1,000 Germans and 500 people from both France and Denmark.

In Sri Lanka, where more than 4,000 people are unaccounted for, television channels were devoting 10 minutes every hour to reading the names and details of the missing. Often, photos of the missing are shown with appeals for them to contact their families or the police.

On the Thai resort island of Phuket, people scoured photos pinned to noticeboards of the dead and missing in scenes reminiscent of the aftermath of the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington. Authorities in Asia scaled back or cancelled New Year's Eve celebrations.

Away from the disaster areas, new year parties that were going ahead were expected to be used to raise relief funds. Sydney city officials said it was too late to cancel festivities, including spectacular fireworks from the Harbour Bridge, but revellers would be urged to give generously to a disaster fund.